SuperNova Afterglow: End Of Days

The Gardener and the Writer

I want my head in a musty old tent on an Indian summer day reading old comic books until I have absorbed the last ray of light. I don't know how to say it better. I will keep trying, as long as I have a pen in my hand and a muse in my heart.

This late in the year, the blooms don't need my help. I watch them grow with anticipation, each day hoping for some new, brilliant surprise. I planted those seeds and I moved the soil, supplied hydration and whatever else before letting the sun's rays direct it's energy to what I fathered. In my early years as a gardener, I was neglectful. Either I was ignorant of what I needed to do or too stubborn to try the proven methods.

With the light dimming and briefer each day, I hope God will shed extra light and rain to extend this final season. I've seen the ravaged leaves from blight and pests that I must protect against. What could be perfect and beautiful becomes a marred and mangled mass with unruly vines and half covered blooms. The dedication and talent it took to spawn my creations from fertile soil makes this shameful gardener fence himself from the world, allowing a peek here and there of what will impress.

I don't brag anymore. I don't boast of my potential. What I could have done is in the past. What I have left is only what little time and God's grace will give me. Some days, when I rise, I don't even venture out to see. I've become too distracted with the musings instead of appreciating what I have sown. Then something helps me remember and I take a gander. Usually I'm surprised. Sometimes disappointed. But it's always an adventure.

So, when I see the fragmented sentences and the untended words, I realize I could've done more. When I see an unedited poem that could've used more inspection, I realize I could've done more. And that doesn't mean they're still isn't time for me. But I have wasted most of it. I have mused about what I could do and what I could be more than putting those talents to use.

I am still happy with me. I don't have to be filled with regret. They say we are supposed to look beyond our own horizons and see what we can find for ourselves beyond where we stand. I have looked for a long time without ever moving. I know there could have been more for me but I do not have the tools to achieve and become accustomed to only seeing my shortcomings.

There have been my cheerleaders along the way. I disappointed most, if not all of them. When I look around I feel as though I standalone. That was my own choosing. Does not mean that people abandoned me, but rather I abandoned my dreams. Or ran around aimlessly trying to figure out how to find them until I had to give up and noticed no one else was around.

People have written books on how to be successful as a writer among other things. If I have to live by other people's books, then I am not living truly to my own needs. Who should I be like? I should be myself. There are role models that inspire us to try new things, but after the testing we should know who we want to be.

I could set goals for another year and say that this is going to be the year. But I would be fooling myself. I think as long as I am seeking what I truly desire to be, I am on a path. If I take myself off the path, I fail. I will go round and round trying to figure out what it is I should be doing instead of just doing.

Do I digress now from my rambling? Or should I continue to search in my heart and head where these thoughts take me?

More later...